


Butterflies and Moths

by GooberFeesh



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Child Abuse, Disturbing Themes, F/M, Illnesses, Incest, Mental Instability, Sibling Incest, Underage Kissing, mental in
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-25
Packaged: 2018-04-27 10:41:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5045176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GooberFeesh/pseuds/GooberFeesh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Morbid glimpses into the childhood, adolescence, and adulthood of Lady Lucille Sharpe and Sir Thomas Sharpe. </p><p>Rating to change and tags to be updated as more is added.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Birth

**Author's Note:**

> What do you do when you have far too many ideas and not enough time to turn them into full-fledged fics? You make a collection of small drabbles instead. Also: Chronology isn't my goal, yet the first few installments will be structured this way.

Lucille is not yet three when she sees her brother for the first time. 

She understands nothing of birth, or much else, really, but the moment she sees the diminutive infant - swathed and cradled in the bend of Theresa’s arm - she knows that she loves him. 

Tiny fingers desperately reach for even tinier ones in an attempt to touch, yet perhaps her actions are a bit too much because her nurse chides in a gentle voice: 

“Take care, Miss Lucille, for he is small and delicate and must always be treated very kindly.”

Lucille can’t begin to fathom the notion of premature births, or how someone could even arrive in the world too early, but she obeys nonetheless and tries to reach for the baby again; she is slower this time and far more tender with him, and her effort is rewarded when he latches onto her hand. 

“Well done, Miss,” Theresa praises, basking the two siblings in a maternal warmth they neither see nor receive from their mother.

Lucille shifts along the woman’s knee to be closer, and once she is able she leans over to set a kiss against the softness of the little one’s head. 

“ _Thomas_ ,” she whispers.


	2. First Steps

Thomas does not walk until the third month following his second birthday. He is slower than Lucille, than other children, yet Lucille never once deems him incapable or defective. She teaches him in the nursery to the sound of the piano drifting through the house. 

“Like this,” she explains, grabbing his hands and standing him in front of her. 

The young boy is able to stand on his own, but his balance is poor; he makes a keening sound of discomfort as Lucille gingerly tugs him towards her. 

“You must try, Thomas, or you shall never walk,” she says determinedly, in a way that makes her seem much older than half-four. 

With her help, Thomas walks a wobbly step, and then another, before Lucille promptly decides that his progress has earned independence. Thus, she releases his hands and moves back, so that there is a gap of space between them. 

Absent of his sister’s guidance and physical support, Thomas begins to cry. 

“Come to me,” Lucille beckons, opening her thin arms. She has to resist the maddening urge to comfort him, to embrace him and console him until his eyes are dry and the skipping, fitful whines pass. “I’m right here.”

Pacified by the words, though still quite distinctly unhappy, Thomas stumbles into his first solitary step unassisted. Lucille can barely contain a wild sense of joy at the progress, though her victory is short-lived when Thomas’ second step sends him onto the ground. It is here where his cries become earnest wails. 

The melodic song that previously accompanied their lesson ends in a forceful slamming of black and white keys, prompting Lucille to avert widened, fearful eyes towards the door. Mother dislikes when Thomas cries. 

Hurrying over to her fallen brother, Lucille sits with him on the floor and rocks him to and fro; she rubs his back, kisses into his wheat-colored curls - _anything_ to soothe his distress. To her immense relief, her attempt at comfort is rewarded when Thomas eventually quiets into an uneven rhythm of shuddering hiccups and mewls. He clutches onto her dress, suckling his thumb, while Lucille murmurs that they will practice walking again when he feels better. 

Below them, the piano resumes its melancholy arrangement.


	3. Fever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the kind comments, all. I very much appreciate them. <3

Winter is long and particularly brutal the year that Lucille turns seven, and with the merciless season comes unimaginable gloom and illness. Thomas, who is now older but no less fragile, battles a fever so terrible and crippling that he’s confined to his bed for days. 

Theresa nurses him with cool facecloths and foul-smelling tonics, yet it is Lucille who keeps a constant vigil at the boy’s bedside; she holds his little hand, his skin a scorching savannah against her arctic tundra, and strokes his brittle fingers as they twitch restlessly in delirious dreams. 

She watches his face - how his veined eyelids crinkle and spasm in sunken sockets, how his pale mouth twists with each ache and pain of his frail body… 

This, of course, creates an inescapable feeling of helplessness within Lucille. 

For once, she is unable to ease Thomas’ suffering or take his place; he must endure alone, completely devoid of her participation, and it frightens her more than Father’s monstrous temper. As much as she desperately longs to do something, she can do nothing more than offer her presence. 

Sick with worry, Lucille lies down beside her brother and curls herself around his smaller form; she pulls him close and settles his head along her arm, so that he’s cradled against her like the doll she never plays with. She touches his ribcage, which wheezes and rattles beneath her fingertips, and then reverently cups his cheekbone in the dip of her bruised palm. 

The thought of losing him, of losing _Thomas_ , births an oddly overpowering and strangely foreign emotion within her; it surges through her undeveloped psyche like venom, encouraging her hold on him to strengthen. A pure, untainted fragment darkens within Lucille’s soul, and it encourages her to speak aloud. 

“I will not leave you,” she vows, kissing Thomas’ damp temple. “And you will **never** be taken from me.”


	4. Never Apart

“Lucy?”

Thomas’ imploring voice is barely a whisper as he seeks out his sister in the nursery. He had watched from atop the stairs, gripping wooden balusters in trembling, powerless fists, as Mother struck Lucille over and over and **over** again until she could barely rise from the floor, let alone clamber up the steps once the cruel punishment had ended.

How terribly he had desired to intervene, to tell Mother not to harm Lucille, yet he had long since made a promise to Lucille to never step in and to never try and offer himself in her stead. Even if it had been _him_ who knocked the painting from the wall in their careless game. 

‘You are far more precious than I am,’ Lucy had told him, as they lay together in her bed one night. ‘Mother will never hurt you, Thomas, so long as I am here for her to hurt.’

The boy eventually finds Lucille tucked in a corner of the room, holding the end of her dress against her brow. As he draws nearer he sees, much to his dismay, that she is bleeding from a small gash just above her eyebrow; the wound isn’t large - not large like the splotches of purple and blue along the porcelain canvas of her skin - but it is deep and determined to send thin, crimson rivulets down her face. 

“Lucy, please forgive me,” he apologizes, reaching out to touch her.

Lucille straightens from her slouch and looks at Thomas. Sweet, concerned, _beautiful_ Thomas. He is eight now, yet he still stands no taller than he did at six.

“Does it hurt?” he continues, before she can respond to his first statement. 

“No,” Lucille lies, and she’s very convincing. She’s learned that lying, even to herself, creates a sense of freedom within her. It’s a wicked sensation that she’s recently come to rely on. “It’s nothing, Thomas.”

Edging closer, Thomas reaches for Lucille’s hand - the hand that’s holding her dress to her eyebrow - and tugs at it. Slowly, she lowers her arm to reveal the cut in full; it’s still bleeding, though nowhere near as profusely, and it shortly becomes a target for Thomas’ concerned lips. 

He sets a pattern of kisses just beside the torn blemish, lingering sweetly on each one, while Lucille wraps her arms around him. She leans into her brother, starved for attention and affection after her beating, and asks: 

“Will you stay with me, Thomas?”

“Yes,” he answers, shelving his chin over her narrow shoulder. 

“Never apart,” she states.

“Never apart,” he echoes.


	5. Touch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I’ve put it in the tags, but I’d also like to provide a warning here as well: This chapter deals with underage and incestuous material. Reader discretion is advised.

Lucille is thirteen when Thomas touches her for the first time. 

It is not the soft, brotherly strokes he frequently applies to her head, or her cheek, but long and intimate caresses against the inside of her thighs. She spreads her knees invitingly, welcoming the contact, as she exhales against the thrumming pulse in his neck. 

In the spring she began to bleed, and with the official entrance into womanhood she finds herself desiring to be touched by her brother more than she ever has.

Curiosity guided them to explore one another in years before - to familiarize each other with their biological differences and anatomy in a series of naked comparisons. This, however, is very different. 

This, Lucille thinks, is _love_. 

With the servants asleep and neither Father nor Mother present to discover their secret exploration, Thomas feels safe. He kisses his sister on the mouth, as he often does when they are alone, and experiences an exhilarating thrill when she makes a content sound in response. 

Making Lucille happy is his keenest pleasure; he’s never known anything more surely. 

“Thomas,” the girl speaks, guiding his fingers below her nightgown and across the soft skin of her developing breasts. “Will you touch me here?”

“Yes, Lucy,” the boy replies, shifting atop Lucille. “I’ll touch you wherever you please.”

“Good,” Lucille praises, her body arching as she imagines Thomas touching her in other places. “Only you can touch me like this, and…” 

She pauses, lifting her hand to ghost across his pink, perfect lips. She opens her eyes, which seem to gleam in the darkness with an affectionate sort of selfishness. She then brushes her opposite hand along his thin hipbone, delving lower until he shudders.

“Only **_I_** can touch you like this.”


	6. Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I previously stated, my intention wasn’t to go in chronological order with this series. The first few drabbles, as I’m sure you’ve all noticed, followed that particular pattern; however, starting from here on out each update will range anywhere from adulthood and back through childhood and teenage years.

The years pass like individual eternities in a place where there is no sunlight and unlocked doors. Lucille is subjected to scalding and freezing water, electric shocks and long syringes, isolation and confinement…yet none of these ‘treatments’ can hope to cure the crippling pain of estrangement. 

Or of _anger_. 

Thomas was taken from her, ripped from her nurturing arms and shipped to boarding school in the absence of other relatives. There were no visits, no letters, no **anything** to show that he was just as mad with desolation and loneliness as she was. Even so, he remained her tether and strength, her escape and freedom from cold floors and whispering walls. 

Lucille privately considers all of this as she’s shown into the room where she will meet with Thomas for the first time since their fateful separation. She is dressed well in a fine black dress - a luxury that comes from the meager remains of the Sharpe fortune - with her long, raven hair neatly combed and plaited.

She waits by the window, staring down into a world she barely remembers, when she is joined by another presence. She doesn’t turn right away, yet when a voice speaks - a voice that carries an incredibly gentle, incredibly _familiar_ tone - she angles herself to face the one who calls to her again:

“Lucille?” 

Her strides do not carry the frantic and stiff skittishness of a mental patient, but the elegance and grace of a Lady as she approaches this well-dressed, not-quite-stranger.

Adolescence has developed what childhood began, for Thomas stands, for the very first time, much taller than Lucille. He walks confidently on lengthened legs that lead to a thin torso and squared shoulders; his hair has become much darker and is now nearly the same shade as her own. 

In spite of his vast differences and handsome advancements, it is Thomas’ eyes that draw Lucille in. She gazes into his brightly blue irises, cherishing the magnificent shade and remembering how striking they have always appeared.

Lucille extends a gloved hand and guides curious fingers to Thomas’ face; she brushes his gentle features and elegant contours - Father’s nose and Mother’s cheekbones - as she accepts that this man is, in fact, her younger brother. When she _does_ accept it, her admiration suddenly turns cold and is replaced by a fierce and urgent streak of jealousy. 

Others have watched Thomas mature and change, yet she has not. 

Perhaps picking up on her unspoken distress, Thomas turns his head in her fingers and rests his cheek in the dip of her silky palm; it is a familiar gesture that has survived years of infinite despair, and it rekindles life within Lucille.

“There is much we must discuss, dear sister,” Thomas speaks, prior to reaching for her hand. He takes it within his own, kisses the back of it, and then settles it between them, where it is clasped in his fingers. “Shall we go home?”

Home. The very word has become so foreign to Lucille that she barely registers a significance. 

A beat passes before she grips his hand tighter and replies: “Yes. Let’s go home.”


End file.
